Serena ready for Aussie Open return

Serena Williams will be ready to make her tennis comeback at the Australian Open with her return to Melbourne for the season’s opening Grand Slam “very likely”, organisers said on Wednesday, AFP reports.

Williams, 36, won this year’s Australian Open while pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl in September. She has not played a competition since, raising questions over whether the 23-time Grand Slam winner would attempt to defend her title next month.

But tournament director Craig Tiley is optimistic she will return for a crack at her seventh Melbourne Park crown after marrying Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian last month.

“She’s got her visa, she’s entered, she’s practising and she’s probably just got to find a bit more space for a bigger entourage,” Melbourne’s Herald Sun quoted him as saying.

“There’s no question that she’ll be ready in our view and she wants to break a record that is Margaret Court’s. It would be a pretty significant accomplishment for her to be able to do that.”

Australian Court has 24 major titles, making her the most successful player in Grand Slam history.

Tiley described the Australian Open, which will be held from January 15-28, as a “family-friendly event”.

“We’ve had this before. Roger Federer travels with his four kids and we are a family-friendly event,” he said, referring to Williams and her baby.

Meanwhile, tennis legend Evonne Goolagong Cawley believes Serena Williams will join her in one of the sport’s most exclusive clubs with a momentous Australian Open triumph as a doting mother.

Goolagong Cawley, fellow Australian all-time great Margaret Court and Belgian Kim Clijsters are the only three mothers in half a century of professional tennis to have won grand slam singles titles.

But Williams is less than seven weeks away from becoming the fourth, according to Goolagong Cawley.

“I think she will,” the former world No.1 told AAP

“I hope so because she’s got so much talent and so much in her to win more tournaments.

“I know that from my own experience, after I had my daughter Kelly, I felt great. I just wanted to get back on that court.”